1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to data replication operations and particularly to transaction consistent data replication operations.
2. Description of Background
As currently applied, data replication technology is utilized to increase data availability between computing systems and/or the scalability system. Database systems also can be configured to exploit the logging and recovery infrastructures in order to support data replication operations. Computing systems such as email and file systems typically rely on taking snapshot of data changes and delivering the data changes to replica sites for data replication support. Generally, database replication provides transaction level consistency in regard to data replication, while email and file systems provide data level data replication consistency. As such, transaction level consistency guarantees that the data contained within a data change set that is sent from a primary server to a replica site is consistent. In contrast, data level consistency guarantees that only committed data is sent to a replica site, however, multiple data objects that are updated by a transaction may be delivered to a replica site in one or more data change sets.
Content management systems in operation are similar to a file systems, but contain a much richer semantic and transaction model. Content management systems are utilized in conjunction with content repositories to store content data and meta-data that is associated with the content data (e.g., content data version meta-data information). Typically, transaction level consistency is necessitated for the enforcement of content semantics and constraints within a content management system. This approach differs from the traditional database approach of logging every operation that occurs within a system, wherein this approach eventually introduces a significant amount of I/O overhead within a system in addition to causing a performance on the system. Thus, a logging operation based approach is not an operational efficient approach. In addition, content management systems may comprise content semantics that are not aware of or supported by database systems. As such, traditional database logging does not have the necessary functions to support content management level replication